Dylan Moran

After last week's episode, which worked hard for its laughter, tonight's is a far more relaxed and subtle affair. Bernard (Dylan Moran) and Manny (Bill Bailey) decide to write a children's book. Bernard's first attempt at entertaining four to six-year-olds consists of a 1,300-page saga about the relationship between an academic who survived the Stalinist purges and a daughter whose long and bitter marriage is collapsing. "You should never talk down to children," he says. The episode plays to one of the great strengths of the series - the antagonistic co-dependence that binds the main characters together. It is a wonderful return to form.

I wonder if, by any chance, they have got the casting the wrong way round. Bill Bailey, who is very good indeed, is potentially the more terrifying of the two, while Dylan Moran can do endearing lying down. God knows where the girl-next-door is supposed to fit in. Good sitcoms are usually about lifers, shackled together by celibacy, poverty, family, necessity, history, somethingy. What chain gang are these three in?

Funny. strange

Irish comedian Dylan Moran has already proved he can act in sitcoms. But now he's teamed up with Graham 'Father Ted' Linehan to write one. They both talked to Maxton Walker about the surreal result, Black Books.

Moran is the funniest actor on television bar none and not on it half enough. His style is relaxed to the point of dislocation. He looks as if he has wandered on to the set by accident, perhaps to read the gas meter.